DigiCamera Lucida

Being new to the blogging universe, my posts so far have been rather mono-medium. There are several reasons for this but initially, I'd only wanted to treat the moments I get to spend with Spot4Nosh as a kind of memo or diary of our dining experiences and an outlet to get prose out of my system. But I've decided that when writing about food, you really can't argue with that old adage that a picture really is worth a thousand words! After all, the first sections I look through in any cookbook or recipe card are the pictures. And some of the beautiful and mouth watering photos presented by other Food Blogs out there are truly inspirational. So I present here the first picture for Spot4Nosh, although taken of what we'd cooked at home for dinner tonight rather than at a restaurant. But one has to get in some practice first right?

Slow braised belly pork and shiitake mushrooms in red braising stock with chilli and palm sugar caramelised red onions.

The dish wasn't prepared to any particular rigid instructions which is the way I prefer to cook, but inspiration came from a Kylie Kwong recipe. After an hour or so of braising in the oven, the lengths of belly pork and the reconstituted mushrooms were beautifully tender and infused with the warmth of star anise and cinnamon quills used in the braising liquid. A light garnish with thinly sliced birdseye chilli (and chopped curly parsley in this case) added refreshing but not overpowering points of heat and zest to cut through the richness. The use of palm sugar for caramelisation added a mellow rich sweetness to the sauce. Absolutely went down very well with piping hot plain steamed rice and a side of barely blanched snowpeas.

Hopefully I will get into the habit of carrying a camera around at opportune moments from now on. Meanwhile some older posts may yet score an accompanying retrospective photo, if possible. But I don't think I'll go crazy with the pictures though, since I don't go eating out for the purpose of blogging and I started this for the love the writing....oh and eating.